Bear-proof fence?

“Well, that’s the bears sorted out then,” said my colleague, as he finished setting up the bear alarm around our field camp in remote northeast Greenland.

The way he said it was as if this invisible fishing line encircling our tents somehow had the power to repel the half tonne predators. I imagined one of these monsters padding silently toward our camp as we slept, and then suddenly backing off at the touch of that fine thread on its fur. ‘Oh, fishing line,’ thinks the bear, ‘well I won’t go in there then.’

Of course, that’s not what happens. What happens is that the bear lumbers right on through the line, barely – if at all – noticing its presence, triggering a screaming alarm that hurls us all, terrified, from our sleep, lurching for a rifle or revolver or flare gun  and trying to get off some warning shots without either being eaten or shooting each other. Nonetheless, standing in my camp, enclosed by that fine thread linking the metal stakes that mark our bear fence, knowing that it is there gives me a wholely unwarranted feeling of safety that I do not have until the bear fence is in place. This, despite the fact that I can’t even see whether it is there or whether it is not. I have this faith that, somehow, the invisible thread has me covered.